Personal Life
Manoel de Oliveira married Maria Isabel Brandão de Meneses de Almeida Carvalhais (born 1918) in Porto on December 4, 1940. They have four children: Manuel Casimiro Brandão Carvalhais de Oliveira (painter born in 1941 known as Manuel Casimiro), Jose Manuel Brandão Carvalhais de Oliveira (born 1944), Maria Isabel Brandão Carvalhais de Oliveira (born 1947) and Adelaide Maria Brandão Carvalhais de Oliveira (born 1948). He has several grandchildren through his daughter Adelaide, including the actors Jorge Trêpa and Ricardo Trêpa.
In his younger days, Oliveira competed as a race car driver. During the 1937 Grand Prix season he competed in and won the International Estoril Circuit race, driving a Ford V8 Special.
Manoel de Oliveira was chosen to give the welcoming speech at Pope Benedict XVI's meeting with representatives of the Portuguese cultural world on 12 May 2010 at the Belém Cultural Center. In the speech, titled "Religion and Art", he said that morality and art may well have derived from the religious attempt at "an explanation of the existence of human beings" with regard to their "concrete insertion in the Cosmos". The arts "have always been strictly linked to religions" and Christianity has been "prodigal in artistic expressions". In an interview published the day before, Oliveira, who was raised a Catholic, said that, "doubts or not, the religious aspect of life has always accompanied me," and added, "All my films are religious."
In July 2012 Oliveira spent a week in hospital to treat a respiratory infection and congestive heart failure. He is currently working on pre-production for his sixtieth film The Church of the Devil.
Oliveira was born the very same day as fellow centenarian Elliott Carter, the acclaimed American composer, who died in 2012.
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